Railroads must contend with enormous liability related to their various railroad crossings around the clock, every day of the year. Railroads have the right of way of travel. Anyone must yield to rail traffic when approaching a railroad crossing. However, railroad crossings remain dangerous. As of 2009, there were 136,041 railroad crossing in the United States. Of that number, over 60,000 had gates, lights, bells and other equipment that must have power provide to them for operation and subsequently maintained. In 2009, 431 people were killed at railroad crossings while 343 were injured on railroad right of ways.
Typically to provide a safer crossing, one solution is to provide more crossing gates, alarms, bells, control circuitry, etc. to more crossings. However, with each more and more installations, costs become prohibitive to maintain the needed equipment.
What is needed is a solution that increases safety of crossings, and therefore, railroad networks but at a fraction of the cost in installation and maintenance.